Box of Broken Nails Review (PC)

The shackles and chains of Silent Hill 4: The Room are alive once again, pummeling at the seemingly impenetrable doorway to yet another gloomy hollow. The door, despite being surrounded with familiar paintings and heirlooms, isn’t of this world. There’s something about it, almost as if it harbors a hostile spirit—a secret, or an entity that would soon rather force entry than depart. I must keep it concealed. I must do whatever it takes to keep the other side from bleeding across the threshold. A hammer; a box of nails; and a lot of wishful thinking. It seems that I’m as good as dead.

Box of Broken Nails isn’t one for pouring visual cues down your throat, nor is it one for the idea of taking your hand and telling you what’s what and who’s who. No, Box of Broken Nails is a horror that rejects transparency and openly adopts sworn secrecy. It doesn’t give you a carrot on a stick, and it doesn’t tell you how to survive whatever monstrosities that loom in the dark. Instead, it gives you a simple note, and an objective: keep the door closed, even if it kills you.

Behind this rather barebones objective is a simple game of fetch-and-fix—a loop in which you must take the initiative to explore a vacant home and find the materials needed to board and barricade a mysterious door. You don’t know what the door is, or even how it got there. Heck, you don’t even know who or what is on the other side of it. But, you do know that whatever it hides is bad, and that you need to do all in your power to keep it at bay. Simple, yet oddly intense.

Knock, Knock

Box of Broken Nails doesn’t indulge in plot threads of bottomless character arcs; it finds a canvas, and it settles for a simple brushstroke. In other words, you aren’t immediately subjected to a provoking storyline or any form of fascinating dialogue. Moreover, there are no major character interactions, nor are there any “special” activities or side quests to explore. It’s you, a house of flimsy cards; and a box of nails. It’s Door Simulator with horror elements, basically.

While on the subject of horror, Box of Broken Nails does, in all fairness, foster some excellent ideas and unsettling moments in its brief stint on the doorstep. Alongside an unnerving gameplay loop that more or less forces you to think on your feet from the moment you don the hammer to the second you hit the final nail in the door hinges, Box of Broken Nails also features some tender scares and a great variety of nerve-wracking encounters. It’s still a generic hook, but it does manage to highlight some fantastic moments.

The downside to all of the above is that the game does find itself with a handful of technical issues. Granted, it doesn’t bring anything awful to the table, and it doesn’t bathe in a pool of game-breaking bugs, for that matter. That said, to call Box of Broken Nails a smooth game just wouldn’t be accurate, as it does house several graphical errors that, sadly, sully the immersion and make the flow of the experience a little less enjoyable. A small gripe, but one that needs to be addressed, nonetheless.

Who’s There?

Box of Broken Nails is about as linear as they come, which means that you can, in all honesty, sift through the objectives and experience all that there is to see and do in a single sitting. It doesn’t overstay its welcome with any post-game grandeur, and it doesn’t leave all that many unanswered questions come curtain call, either. In other words, it plays its hand, and it make a swift exit, nothing more, nothing less. And while that isn’t a bad thing, it is something that might disappoint those who have a heart for longer, slightly more fleshed out games. Again, not a bad thing.

Thankfully, while the story itself is short and lacking in any major plot twists, the experience itself does cater to some interesting ideas. As I mentioned above, it fosters a good amount of frights and confrontations, and it gracefully wraps all of it with a ribbon that’s both thematically on point and a lot of fun to marvel at for the brief time that you spend with it.

Of course, Box of Broken Nails would be a lot better if it had a little more meat on the bones, so to speak. However, for a firm but fair asking price, I’d say that it warrants your attention, if only for a short while before you bug out and find another hammer to help scratch that itch.

Verdict

While Box of Broken Nails certainly delivers a solid experience that feels awfully creepy to plow through, it does fall short in a lot of crucial areas. It’s a good horror with a fairly strong gimmick for a hook, true. But, it’s also a game that struggles to keep you coming back for a second, third, or fourth attempt, mainly due to the lack of replay value and basic appeal. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an entertaining indie to plug into, but it’s also one that you find yourself veering away from after the first handful of nails have been bolted into the front door.

Of course, if you have a little time to spare and a few bucks to part ways with, then you should definitely take the plunge into Box of Broken Nails’ hollow portal. If, however, you were hoping to knock upon a different kind of door—a fortress that boasts multiple rooms and all of the nooks and crannies, to boot—then you might be disappointed with how Box of Broken Nails chooses to compile its blueprint. And yet, for the relatively low price of admission, I’d say that you could certainly do a lot worse than Box of Broken Nails. Take from that what you will, friends.